Adventures travelling and working around Australia.

2002 Travels May 1

WEDNESDAY 1 MAY CARNARVON GORGE NP

The body was certainly telling me that it had been excessively exercised, yesterday.

We had a fairly quiet day, to recover from yesterday. I read and sewed. John read.

One of the locals in the campground

A little mild exercise was in order, so we walked from the campground to the Rock Pool – a large waterhole in the creek. The return walk was almost 4kms, so that was enough to loosen things up. Again, walking on the track through the bush was most enjoyable.

The Rock Pool

Interesting bark patterns

Later, realized that the fridge was definitely not working properly – it was not turning itself off, but constantly running. This was another thing that stupid J was wrong about! When the van was built for us, he was the supplier for Vitrofrigo 12V fridges, so it has been to him that one was supposed to turn with fridge issues. I had, before he took the van away at the start of the year, raised some concern about the fridge running with him. His response was that there was nothing wrong, or that, on the offchance that I might know what I was talking about, it “might” be a sticking switch. Patronizing fool! It was much easier to say these things than to actually do something about it!

So, it was over to the phone booth and yet more calls to Mr Incompetent. Of course, he did not answer the first few calls, being the keen business man that he was. With no mobile phone signal here, the trek to the phone box was the only option. When John was eventually able to get an answer, he told John that he would send a new thermostat for us, to Roma, for pickup there. Whether we would find anyone there who could install it was a different matter – and our problem. Why could he not just have checked the switch and thermostat when he had the van for all those weeks?

We could not have the fridge running all the time without eventually depleting the batteries, and maybe doing big damage to the fridge motor. So I put our frozen meat in the Chescold and turned this on full. Turned off the van fridge. I was resigned to – after a couple of days in this warmth – having to throw out things like cheese and some vegies.